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To: FJB who wrote (198277)	4/9/2020 3:49:38 PM
From: kckip	2 Recommendations Recommended By CF Rebel Honey_Bee Respond to of 459411

Here is a WUWT article from yesterday where the author takes a statistical look at the "flattening the curve" interventions......upshot is that there is no statistical indication that any of those methods have done anything to slow the spread. This was written before the model dropped the number of deaths again yesterday. Portion of the article posted below, follow the link for the full article. wattsupwiththat.com Flattening The Curve Willis Eschenbach / 1 day ago April 8, 2020 Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach I’ve been following the many changes in the IHME coronavirus model used by our very own most incompetent Dr. Fauci. (In passing, let me note that he’s been wrong about most everything from the start—from first saying it was not a problem, to predicting 200,000 deaths in the US (based on an earlier version of this model), to advising people to NOT wear masks, to opposing chloroquine. But I digress …) The IHME model is here, and it’s well worth a look, although not worth too much trust—it’s been wrong too many times. To their credit they’ve put the results online here. Another problem with it is that the presentation of the data is so good. It’s good enough that it’s hard not to take it as fact. The model historically has predicted numbers that were too high. The latest incarnation of the model is predicting 81,766 COVID-19 deaths in the US by August 4, 2020. That’s down from 93,000 in the previous incarnation of the model. Are they finally right? History makes one cautious. There’s a discussion of the upgrade of the model here. However, despite their past high estimates in absolute numbers, I figured that their estimates of the shapes of the responses is likely pretty close to realistic. So I thought I’d take a look at the projected daily deaths, to see what I could learn. In particular, I wanted to investigate this idea of “flattening the curve”. What does “flattening the curve” mean? It is based on the hope that our interventions will slow the progress of the disease. By doing so, we won’t get as many deaths on any given day. And this means less strain on a city or a country’s medical system. Be clear, however, that this is just a delaying tactic. Flattening the curve does not reduce the total number of cases or deaths. It just spreads out the same amount over a longer time period. Valuable indeed, critical at times, but keep in mind that these delaying interventions do not reduce the reach of the infection. Unless your health system is so overloaded that people are needlessly dying, the final numbers stay the same. Now, the model lists three kind of interventions on a state-by-state basis. The interventions are: • Stay at home order • Educational facilities closed • Non-essential services closed *<more at link, including charts>* No bed shortage. No ICU bed shortage. And we just shipped some ventilators to New York. We should peak in a week. And while we’re waiting for the peak, we’ve just spent about a trillion dollars to delay 1,783 deaths by a few weeks. Not to save anyone’s life, I say again. Just to delay a couple thousand deaths by a couple weeks … look, it *still* wouldn’t be worth a trillion dollars even if we could actually save that many lives and not just delay their deaths. If it helps your conscience you could give the family of each person who could have been saved a million dollars, that’s only 0.2% of your trillion dollars, and the economy could keep humming along. But it’s simply not worth totally wrecking the lives of 30 million Californians just to save eighteen hundred lives. That’s madness, that’s a terrible deal. I have opposed this from the start. I don’t do a one-sided “benefits” analysis like Dr. Fauci does. I do a COST/benefit analysis, and we’ve just looked at it. Here’s the conclusion of that analysis: Even if your hospital system is going to get overloaded, even if more people are going to die, put the trillion dollars into making the medical system the strongest and most resilient imaginable. Spend it on field hospitals and stocks of disposables, buy ventilators, buy hospitals, buy medical schools, buy beds and gowns, that’s what will save lives. I don’t care, shut down the grade schools if you have to although with a solid medical system you likely won’t have to … but whatever you do … DO NOT SHUT DOWN THE ECONOMY, STUPID!! The costs are far, far too great.